William R. Hobbs, a postdoctorate research fellow in the Lazer Lab, co-led a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which suggests an association between moderate social media use and longer life.

“Given the very strong asso­ci­a­tion between real-​​world inter­ac­tions and better health, it could be that the more you have mod­erate inter­ac­tions online, the more likely you are to be friends with your Face­book friends offline as well, rein­forcing the rela­tion­ships,” Hobbs says.

The study has garnered some major press already, including articles in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Smithsonian.com. David Lazer, co-director of the NULab, praises the study, “It is inno­v­a­tive to con­nect Face­book behav­iors to health and mor­tality out­comes…The iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of these pat­terns will hope­fully spur fur­ther research on the nature of the rela­tion­ship between our social net­works and health-​​related outcomes.”